


From Distance

by emrisemrisemris



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, Dactylic Hexameter, Gen, Poetry, i don't know why i did this to myself, meta-ish?, there are no natural one-word spondees in English I will die on this hill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:47:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22035781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emrisemrisemris/pseuds/emrisemrisemris
Summary: A very small prologue, or epigraph, to AC: Odyssey, which is after all named after a poem.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	From Distance

Speak to me, Muse, of beginnings, of Taýgetos stark in the moonlight,  
Yawning Kaiádas below her, and overhead only the thunder;  
Speak of the word from Delphí, and the terrible price it demanded,  
Death on the mountain tonight for a victory promised tomorrow.  
(Far, far away the Pythía cries out in her cell at the temple,  
Scarce knowing why, but she feels it, as destiny tilts on its axis.)  
See now the sister, the brother, their mother, her husband, the chasm -  
Two things are true in one moment, two children as close as reflections:   
Which was the child in the portent, and which was the sibling who followed,  
Over the cliff into darkness, and down to the arms of the water?  
History falters and fractures: the spear scores away what was written,  
Time shivers: something is starting, or ending, or starting to end.

Sing to me, Muse, of the milestones, of the choices they made and were made by,  
Known or unthought-of, or realised much later for what they had started;  
Who they have loved, and the shapes of it, where they have stood and have fallen,  
Where they have waited or wandered; where, too, they have built or burned down.  
Which was the island they loved best? Which view etched its lines on their heart?  
Whose are the eyes they remember, though time grinds all memories to smoothness?  
Which was the wound that cut deepest, and was it to flesh, or to faith?

Muse, tell me, what was their ending? - & out of some cavern the answer:  
_No ending, not now and not ever, not conquest, not closure, not death:_  
_Memory endures beyond any, and where they have walked still remains._

**Author's Note:**

> This started life as a writing exercise to see whether I could get dactylic hexameters - the metre of choice of classical Greek - to sound good in English. It turns out it was much easier after abandoning the spondee entirely as a lost cause.


End file.
